Washington, D.C. May 15, 2018:”As an act of unbalanced stupidity, Trump’s gushing love of Israel has seldom been equaled. Trump has alienated American allies everywhere and created such an image of aggression, stupidity and arrogance that no one, friend, former friend or enemy has anything but contempt for his incompetence and fear for his psychotic reactions to criticism. He is succeeding in unifying everyone against him, both in American and global economic and political circles. Absent, of course, the shrieking delight on the part of the Israeli Ashkenazi who are hoping that Trump will use the American military to attack Israeli enemies. They want to fight to the limit of American power and lives.”

Table of Contents

An anniversary, an embassy, and the destructive power of Donald Trump by DW Editor-in-Chief Ines Pohl

Israel at 70: Bibi’s Troubled Hour of Power by Patrick J. Buchanan

The Guardian view on Gaza shootings: stop killing unarmed civilians

Gaza residents to bury dead from Israel border protest

Zionism vs Democracy by Joel Timmerman

Israel and Palestine Human Rights Watch

A short flight to Armageddon: Trump & Netanyahu bringing us closer to end of times by George Galloway

The 1948 UN Bunche Report

An anniversary, an embassy, and the destructive power of Donald Trump

The flames and fighting in the Gaza Strip after the opening of the US Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem are evidence of the dangerous and destructive power of President Donald Trump

May 14, 2018

by DW Editor-in-Chief Ines Pohl

DW

What could possibly drive Donald Trump to celebrate the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem on the 70th anniversary of the expulsion of the Palestinians from the new state of Israel in 1948? The embassy compound extends halfway into East Jerusalem — an area that Palestinians would claim as their capital in the event of a two-state solution. It’s a diplomatic slap in the face to many Palestinians. And while that does not justify the outbreak of violence, it is nonetheless a deliberate provocation on Washington’s part — meaning the US president also bears responsibility for the many dead and injured in the resulting protests.

Destroying the Iran deal

What could possibly drive this man to destroy the hard-won Iran nuclear deal with a single signature, without even bothering to consult his European counterparts and determine a way forward? In doing so, Trump has shown a willingness to risk further escalation in the Middle East, as well as throw 70 years of peaceful trans-Atlantic relations with Europe overboard.

What is driving this man, who seems bent on dismantling every single one of his predecessor’s achievements, with absolutely no plan of what should follow this destruction?

Donald Trump has never been an elected politician before. He hasn’t been socialized in this business, which is all about give and take, painstaking compromise, and the careful weighing of advantages against disadvantages. In the best-case scenario, politicians think carefully about the consequences of their actions — including those that extend far into the future.

You only have to look at the symbols he’s chosen to represent his power. The gold letters spelling out his name on the towers he’s built say it all: Look at me, I’m the best, and I can do what I want. He may have entered the presidency touting “America First” but really, his message is “Donald Trump First.”

No plan B

This realization is nothing new. But recent events have highlighted the disastrous power this man possesses. Trump doesn’t have a plan B. When he acts, he doesn’t think about the consequences which may only make themselves felt four or eight years from now. He doesn’t care how his actions and his verbal attacks affect any country other than the US.

He flaunts his power, because he can — always with the goal of drawing as much attention to himself as possible. And that’s easy to get when you casually sow destruction.

That’s the reason why he’s chosen a historically significant day to reopen the US Embassy in Jerusalem. And that’s the reason he’s taken a hammer to the Iran deal, without giving any thought to what comes next.

Wake up, Europe!

For Europe and for Germany, this should be a huge wake-up call. Seven decades after the end of World War II, it’s time for Europe to grow up. And that means shouldering responsibility for foreign policy and security issues. Germany needs to finally get serious and start investing in its armed forces again, even if many Germans have in the past been more comfortable with an army that wasn’t fully equipped for defense.

Israel at 70: Bibi’s Troubled Hour of Power

May 15, 2018

by Patrick J. Buchanan

AntiWar

For Bibi Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister save only founding father David Ben-Gurion, it has been a week of triumph.

Last Tuesday, President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal as Bibi had demanded. Thursday, after Iran launched 20 missiles at the Golan Heights, Bibi answered with a 70-missile attack on Iran in Syria.

“If it rains on us, it will storm on them. I hope we have finished the episode,” Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, boasting that Israel’s raids hit “nearly all Iranian infrastructure in Syria.”

The day before, Bibi was in Moscow, persuading Vladimir Putin to cancel the sale of Russia’s S-300 air defense system to Damascus.

Yesterday, in an event televised worldwide, the U.S. embassy was transferred to Jerusalem, with Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner doing the honors in what Bibi called a “glorious day.” Few can recall a time when Israel seemed in so favorable a position.

The White House and the Republican Party that controls Congress are solidly behind Israel. Egypt is cooperating to battle terrorists in Sinai.

Israel has a de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf royals. And the Palestinians have never been more divided, isolated and alone.

Yet, there is another side to this story, also visible this last week.

As the transfer ceremony of the Jerusalem embassy was taking place, TV split screens showed pictures of protesting Palestinians, 52 of whom were shot dead Monday, with thousands wounded by snipers. Some 40,000 had rallied against the U.S. embassy move.

Even before Monday’s body count, the Gaza Health Ministry said that, over the previous six Fridays of “March of Return” protests, 49 Palestinians had been killed and 2,240 hit by live fire from Israeli troops.

Those dead and wounded Palestinians are not likely to be forgotten in Gaza. And while Israel has never had so many Arab regimes willing to work with her in pushing back against Iran, Arab League Chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit called the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem, a “clear violation of international law.” Gheit added: “The fall of Palestinian martyrs by the bullets of the Israeli occupation must ring an alarm … bell to any state that does not find anything wrong with the immoral and illegal stance that we are watching.”

Last week, Hezbollah, which arose in resistance to the 1982 Israeli occupation of Lebanon, and expelled the Israeli army 18 years later, won Lebanon’s elections. A Hezbollah-backed coalition will likely form the new government in Beirut.

Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S. and Bibi ally, said that any attack by Hezbollah, which fought Israel to a standstill in 2006, should bring an Israeli declaration of war – on Lebanon.

While Israel launched some 100 strikes on Syria in recent years, Syrian President Bashar Assad has survived and, with the aid of Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, won his civil war.

Assad and his army and allies are far stronger now, while President Trump, Israel’s indispensable ally, speaks of bringing U.S. troops home from Syria. In polls, a majority of Americans lines up behind Israel in its clashes, but a majority also wants no more U.S. wars in the Middle East.

Also, Sunday, the U.S. sustained another major political defeat.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi lost his re-election bid. Based on early results, the winning coalition was that of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, against whose forces U.S. troops fought a decade ago.

Running second was a ticket led by a Shiite militia general close to Iran. When a new government is formed in Baghdad, the orientation of Iraq seems certain to shift away from the United States.

While the Israelis are the most powerful nation in the region, how long can they keep 2 million Palestinian Arabs confined in the penal colony that is the Gaza Strip? How long can they keep the 2 million Palestinians of the West Bank living in conditions even Israeli leaders have begun to compare to apartheid?

Across the West, especially in universities, a BDS movement to have students, companies and consumers boycott, divest and sanction Israeli-produced products has been gaining ground.

The Palestinians may have been abandoned by Arab rulers and the wider world. Yet, history teaches that people forced to survive in such conditions eventually rise in rebellion and revolution, take revenge, and exact retribution for what was done to them and their own.

Republican leaders often say that we cannot permit “any daylight” between the U.S. position and that of Israel.

But can the country that decried for decades the panicked reaction of an Ohio National Guard that shot and killed four students at Kent State University sit silent as scores of unarmed protesters are shot to death and thousands are wounded by Israeli troops in Gaza?

Bibi and Israel appear to be on a winning streak. It is difficult to see how, over the long run, it can be sustained.

The Guardian view on Gaza shootings: stop killing unarmed civilians

Editorial

Channelling a reckless Donald Trump, Israeli ministers appear to have adopted a dangerous mindset: to destroy the national aspirations of the Palestinians by military force

May 14, 2018

The Guardian

It is inexcusable for soldiers of a military, especially those under democratic civilian control, to shoot and kill protesters, almost all of whom were unarmed, and who pose no credible threat. Yet at the boundary between Gaza and Israel today Israeli soldiers seem to have done just that. It should make Israelis quail that demonstrators were sprayed with live ammunition with apparent impunity. There were dozens of deaths and hundreds of maimings among the Palestinians who had marched to the border to make a point about their right to return to their ancestral homes. Israel’s army evinced no shame in committing what looks like a war crime. These are serious accusations. Yet they were greeted with little more than a shrug. By blockading Gaza, Israel imprisoned 2 million people behind barbed wire and military towers. Israel treated the violence as a jailer might a prison riot: a tragic fault of the inmates.

This is a dangerous mindset for Israelis to embrace. Yet they have done so because the extreme right in Israel, and most of the present government ministers, nurture the idea that Israel can, through its vastly superior military force, end the national aspirations of the Palestinians. These politicians take succour from US president Donald Trump, who has made good on his promise to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Today Mr Trump’s ambassador, who gave money to Jewish far-right groups in Israel, opened his nation’s new embassy in Jerusalem. This is a reckless and provocative step that will harm the prospects for peace. Like the issue of refugees, settlements and borders, the status of Jerusalem is unfinished business. No state is internationally recognised as having sovereignty over Jerusalem. Its status was meant to be determined through negotiations.

In siding with Israel Mr Trump signalled the end of any pretence that his administration might be an honest broker in the conflict. Any peace talks overseen by Mr Trump’s team are likely to fail before they begin. The US president will learn what happens when the facts he has created on the ground collide with reality. What will happen to the 300,000 Palestinians living in east Jerusalem? Are they all to be herded into enclaves and deprived of their human rights, their land confiscated? Will this be done because of the “truth, peace and justice” that Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel believed in as he welcomed the US ambassador to Jerusalem? Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu have galvanised a people who had been steeped in despair.

In taking Jerusalem off the table, the only inviolable demand Palestinians feel they have left is the right of return. Palestinians see the flight or expulsion of refugees at the time of the creation of Israel 70 years ago this week as their catastrophe or nakba. Israelis retort that implementation of the right of return is incompatible with the survival of a democratic Jewish majority state. The issue is now on the lips of every Palestinian. The conflict in the Holy Land is not a zero-sum game, where there is just one winner. The opposite is more likely to be true. Either both will fail – and continue with one civilian population humiliating and terrorising the other. Or they find a way to live side by side in two states, one that affords each people their own independence and security. If happily such an outcome was achieved, it would make sense for west Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel and east Jerusalem to be the Palestinian capital. This is obvious to everyone but Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu, who instead have capitulated to a vision of brutal domination over a benighted people.

Gaza residents to bury dead from Israel border protest

Funerals for many of the 58 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire during the Gaza border protest will be held on Tuesday. Several countries, although not the US, have condemned Israel’s violent response.

May 15, 2018

DW

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for three days of mourning as Gaza residents prepared to bury those killed in Monday’s violence along the border with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority also called a general strike in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in protest at Gaza’s bloodiest day in years, which saw 58 Palestinians killed — most of them shot dead by Israeli fire — and more than 2,700 people injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The killings took place during a huge protest by more than 40,000 Palestinians at a dozen sites on the border between Gaza and Israel.

Embassy move stirs outrage

A spokesman for the Turkish government has condemned the “massacre” and accused the United States of having “Palestinian blood on its hands.” He also said Turkey will lower its flags to half-mast to mark the three days of mourning in the Palestinian territories.

The huge outpouring of anger on Monday was timed to mark the inauguration of the new US embassy, which has moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — East Jerusalem is where the Palestinians plan to locate the capital of their future state.

There was confusion over whether further protests were planned for Tuesday in retaliation for Israel’s violent crackdown, which the Israeli military said was defensive action to prevent Palestinians breaking through the border barrier.

Khaled Batch, the head of the grassroots organizing committee of the protests, said Tuesday will be a day for funerals.

Israeli media reported some tents where protesters have been gathering have been taken down at the border.

Other sources said further protests were likely in the West Bank.

Tuesday is what Palestinians call their “nakba” anniversary, or catastrophe marking the creation of Israel 70 years ago

Zionism vs Democracy

May 15. 2018

by Joel Timmerman

There are several millions of Jews living in the United States. The bulk of us are Reformed Jews. Nearly all of us consider ourselves to be Americans. We and our children are proud to have served in the American military and even prouder to be citizens of the one nation that has welcomed refugee Jews, fleeing from European persecutions, and permitted them free access to American society.

A much smaller percentage of American Jews are Zionists. They view themselves as Jews first, Israeli second and, perhaps, Americans third. Their complete allegiance is to the state of Israel and not to America. They send money to Israel and, when they have access to it, military and commercial secrets. They are the Pollards of this country. They do not represent the rest of us at all.

The State of Israel has always been a Zionist state. It was born in violence and hatred. Jews, mostly from Poland, invaded the Palestine area, killing and maiming anyone who stood in their way: Arabs, British soldiers, civilians and even high UN officials. Bombings, bank robberies, arsons and mass murder attended the birth of this state. One man, Menachim Begin, blew up a hotel full of people and was later made Chief of State!

The Zionists have fastened themselves onto the instruments of power in the United States, feeling, rightly, that American soldiers, and most importantly, money, will nurture their state and protect it from their many enemies.

Instead of making efforts to co-exist with their neighbors, Israel has constantly attacked the impoverished Palestinian Arabs and killed as many of them as they could. The IDF has had no problem murdering Arab men, women and children. It has had no problem destroying the homes and businesses of the reviled Arabs and their sole, stated aim, is to drive the Arabs out of their homes so that Jews can take them over.

How redolent this is of the attacks by the Nazis, the Poles and the Russians in recent times past! It is true that the abused child becomes the abusing parent and Israel has in truth become the National Socialists of the Middle East.

The Zionists have infiltrated the American government to a remarkable degree. They have gained an astonishing hold in the American mass media. CNN, Time Warner, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek and Time magazines and a host of other media giants are either owned outright by Jews or are under the control of Jews.

These mighty organs daily pour out a great stream of pro-Israel commentary while Jewish organizations such as the ADL and various other pressure groups, make constant, threatening demands on a subservient American legislative entity.

The fact that there are many Jews in America that view such blatant and ruthless manipulation with horror is never reported in the media.

We are the silent Jews although we outnumber the loud ones twenty to one. Our views, those of tolerance and moderation, are never seen in the media but the frantic, fanatic views of the hysterical Zionists receive daily, slavish attention.

The American pubic is not stupid but it has no voice to express its concerns. Faked opinion polls, pious statements about Israel as “America’s best ally” can be seen daily in all the major branches of the media.

Believe me, Israel is not America’s best ally. Through the Israel lobby, American leaders and legislators do as they are told. The consequences of refusal or worse, opposition to Zionist demands is orchestrated oblivion. Furious because President Harry Truman blocked the sale of weapons of destruction to the rampaging Zionists in 1948, Jewish money backed Thomas Dewey. An assassination attempt was launched by the Stern Gang against Truman but failed.

The British, the United Nations and the United States eventually let the Zionists have their murderous way in Palestine because they grew tired of the constant acts of savage terrorism which seemed to inspire the terrorists to even greater infamies.

These miserable, vicious and ideological creatures have nothing to do with the great majority of American Jews. We deplore their savage, manipulative behavior because we know from bitter experience that eventually the American public will become aroused and infuriated. When that dismal day comes, and it will come, all the rest of us will be held to account for the savage brutes like Sharon and his butchers. We will become the eternal victims of a population enraged by the ruthless and self-serving manipulations of a small, detestable handful of chronic fanatics. We will, at last, lose the respect of our colleagues, our neighbors and our friends and again, the eternal wandering will begin.

Note here that Israel is afraid of Saddam Hussein. He has attacked Israel before, just as Israel has attacked him even earlier. Why should valuable Jewish youth be sacrificed in a war with Iraq when expendable American youth can accomplish the same thing? Perhaps, and I have learned this from a close friend in the Israeli Ministry of Defense, Israel and America can also attack Saudi Arabia and thereby gain military control of two major oil producing areas.

The American President is not an intelligent or reasonable man but those who control him are and they, and the Israeli lobby can see that if both America and Israel can wrest control of oil from the Arabs, both countries will be better off…from the Zionist world view. Jews can make money from the captured oil fields and some of this can be stuffed into the pockets of America’s notoriously corrupt legislators…and bureaucrats.

This is a suicidal, very short-term policy. By catering to American religious fundamentalists, Jewish groups and the oil industry, Bush is digging the grave, not only of his own erratic and fanatic administration but also of very loyal American Jews.

The President may be a stupid man but his handlers are not but they are all so myopic that they cannot see that they are rushing in haste towards the top of a very high cliff.

If only it were the guilty, the stupid and the vicious that would plunge down to their deaths, nothing would be lost and much gained but they will drag with them tens of thousands, or more, of completely innocent people.

The pro-Israel lobby is an enormous and very powerful force in American politics; the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, is the No. 1 foreign-policy lobby in Washington and the fourth most powerful lobby in Washington, according to Fortune Magazine. Other powerful and influential pro-Israel groups include the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

Israel and Palestine

Human Rights Watch

Events of 2017

The Israeli government continued to enforce severe and discriminatory restrictions on Palestinians’ human rights; restrict the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip; and facilitate the unlawful transfer of Israeli citizens to settlements in the occupied West Bank. Punitive measures taken by the Palestinian Authority (PA) exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the closure enforced by Israel. The PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza escalated crackdowns on dissent, arbitrarily arresting critics, and abusing those in their custody.

In February, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed the Regularization Law, which allows Israel to retroactively expropriate private Palestinian land on which settlements have been built, though the High Court of Justice issued an injunction freezing its implementation in August. Between July 2016 and June 2017, Israeli authorities authorized construction work on more than 2,000 new housing units for settlers in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem.

Israel operates a two-tiered system in the West Bank that provides preferential treatment to Israeli settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians. While settlements expanded in 2017, Israeli authorities destroyed 381 homes and other property, forcibly displacing 588 people as of November 6, in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as part of discriminatory practices that reject almost all building permit applications submitted by Palestinians.

Israel continued to maintain its decade-long effective closure of Gaza, exacerbated by Egypt’s keeping its own border with Gaza largely sealed, and to impose restrictions that limit supply of electricity and water, restrict access to medical care and educational and economic opportunity, and perpetuate poverty. Approximately 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.9 million people rely on humanitarian assistance.

Periodic shutdowns of Gaza’s only power plant, a result of a dispute between Fatah and Hamas over who should pay for fuel needed to operate the plant, and the decision by the Israeli government in June to accede to a PA request to cut the electricity it sells to the PA for use in to Gaza, significantly reduced electricity supply in Gaza, leaving households for stretches with four hours or less of electricity a day. Power outages jeopardize water supply, interfere with sewage treatment, and cripple hospital operations.

Tensions around the Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount compound in July-August 2017 triggered an escalation in violence. Israeli security forces used lethal force against demonstrators and against suspected attackers in the West Bank and at the Gaza border. Palestinian assailants, most of them apparently acting without the formal sponsorship of any armed group, carried out stabbings and occasional shootings against Israelis.

Between January 1 and November 6, 2017, Israeli security forces killed 62 Palestinians, including 14 children, and injured at least 3,494 Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, including protesters, suspected assailants or members of armed groups, and bystanders. Palestinians killed at least 15 Israelis during this same time, including 10 security officers, and injured 129 in conflict-related incidents in the West Bank and Israel.

In April and May, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners spent 40 days on hunger strike seeking better conditions. As of November 1, Israeli authorities incarcerated 6,154 inmates on what they consider security grounds, the overwhelming majority Palestinian, including 3,454 convicted prisoners, 2,247 pretrial detainees and 453 administrative detainees held without charge or trial, according to the Israel Prison Service.

The PA and Hamas arrested activists who criticized their leaders, security forces, or policies, and mistreated and tortured some in their custody. The Independent Commission for Human Rights in Palestine (ICHR), a statutory commission charged with monitoring human rights compliance by the Palestinian authorities, received 205 complaints of torture and ill-treatment by PA security forces and 193 such complaints against Hamas security forces as of October 31. Hamas authorities executed six people during this same period following trials that lacked appropriate due process protections.

Gaza Strip

Closure

Israel’s near-total closure of the Gaza Strip, particularly restrictions on movement of people and on outgoing goods, together with Egypt keeping its border with Gaza mostly closed, continued to have severe consequences for the civilian population.

Travel through the Erez Crossing, Gaza’s passenger crossing to Israel, the West Bank, and the outside world, is limited to what the Israeli military calls “exceptional humanitarian cases,” meaning mostly medical patients, their companions, and prominent businesspersons.

In the first 10 months of 2017, an average of about 230 Palestinians exited Erez each day, compared to the average of more than 24,000 Palestinians who crossed each day in September 2000, just before the second “Intifada” or Palestinian uprising, began. Outgoing goods in the same period averaged 207 truckloads per month, mostly produce to be sold in the West Bank and Israel, just 19 percent of the average 1,064 truckloads per month that exited prior to the June 2007 tightening of the closure.

Israeli restrictions on the delivery of construction materials to Gaza and a lack of funding have impeded reconstruction of the 17,800 housing units severely damaged or destroyed during Israel’s 2014 military operation in Gaza. About 29,000 people who lost their homes remain displaced. The Israeli government sought to justify the restrictions by saying that construction materials can be used for military purposes, including fortifying tunnels; it allowed only limited quantities to enter, under the supervision of international organizations.

Measures taken by the PA to pressure Hamas further exacerbated the impact of the closure. Its decision in January to stop buying fuel from Israel that it had been supplying to Hamas authorities and its request in May for Israel to cut the electricity the Israeli government sells to the PA for use in Gaza significantly reduced already limited electricity supply, imperiling critical health, water, and sanitation services.

Patients in Gaza seeking treatment outside Gaza faced lengthening delays in obtaining approvals from the PA. While the PA approved 99 percent of applications within seven days of submission between January and May, that number dropped to 36 percent between June and August and 32 percent in September, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In addition, in September, Israel authorities denied or delayed permits with no response by the time of the appointment to 45 percent of patients seeking treatment outside Gaza. As of August, 40 percent of medications on the “essential drug list” were are at zero stock in Gaza, according to the WHO.

Egypt also blocked all regular movement of people and goods at the crossing with Gaza that it controls, with narrow exceptions mostly for medical patients, those holding foreign passports, residencies or visas, including students, and pilgrims to Mecca. Between January and October, an average of about 2,766 persons monthly crossed through Rafah in both directions, compared with an average of 40,000 per month in the first half of 2013, prior to the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy.

Israel

As of November 6, lethal force by Israeli forces resulted in the killing of 17 and injuring of at least 215 Palestinians in Gaza, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

The Israeli authorities have declared an area inside Gaza near the border with Israel to be a “no-go” zone, justifying it as a means to prevent cross-border attacks. Israeli soldiers fire at people who enter that zone and at fishermen who venture beyond six nautical miles from the shore—the area to which Israel restricts Gaza fishing boats. Israel temporarily expanded the fishing zone to nine miles between May and June and again between October and December. Israel says it restricts access to the sea to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

Hamas and Palestinian Armed Groups

In 2017, Palestinian armed groups launched 10 rockets into Israel from Gaza as of October 31, causing no casualties but generating fear and disruption in affected cities and towns. These rockets cannot be accurately aimed at military objectives and amount to indiscriminate or deliberate attacks on civilians when directed at Israeli population centers. Hamas, which has internal control over Gaza, is responsible for policing the border and the territory it controls and acting to ensure that unlawful attacks do not take place.

Hamas authorities arrested scores of protesters following demonstrations in January related to the electricity crisis in Gaza as well as activists, journalists, and critics throughout the year.

In addition, Gaza’s civilian authorities executed three men in April convicted of collaboration with Israel and three men in May convicted of killing a Hamas leader after trials rife with due process violations, including reliance on confessions in a system where coercion and torture are prevalent.

In Gaza, where laws differ somewhat from those in the West Bank, having “unnatural intercourse” of a sexual nature, understood to include same-sex relationships, is a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

West Bank

Israel

In the West Bank, as of November 6, Israeli security forces fatally shot 42 Palestinians and wounded at least 3,279, including passersby, demonstrators, and those suspected of attacking Israelis. In many cases, video footage and witness accounts strongly suggest that forces used excessive force. In this same period, attacks by settlers killed three Palestinians, injured 49, and damaged property in 106 incidents, according to OCHA.

In February, an Israeli military court sentenced to 18 months in prison soldier Elor Azaria, who had been convicted of manslaughter for the 2016 killing at close range of a Palestinian who lay immobilized on the ground after stabbing another Israeli soldier. The IDF chief of staff reduced the sentence to 14 months in September.

The conviction marked a rare exception, as Israeli authorities continued in 2017 to fail to hold accountable security forces and settlers who attack Palestinians and destroy or damage Palestinian mosques, homes, schools, olive trees, cars, and other property. Between 2013 and 2016, police closed 91.8 percent of cases of reported settler violence against Palestinian persons and property tracked by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din without indicting anyone.

Settlements, Discriminatory Policies, Home Demolitions

Israel continued to provide security, administrative services, housing, education, and medical care for about 607,000 settlers residing in unlawful settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel’s building of 2,000 new settlement housing units in the period between July 2016 and June 2017 marked an 18 percent decrease over the same period in 2015-2016, but Israeli authorities approved plans for 85 percent more housing units in the first half of 2017 than all of 2016, according to the Israeli group Peace Now. International humanitarian law bars an occupying power’s transfer of its civilians to occupied territory.

Building permits are difficult, if not impossible, for Palestinians to obtain in East Jerusalem or in the 60 percent of the West Bank under exclusive Israeli control (Area C). This has driven Palestinians to construct housing and business structures that are at constant risk of demolition or confiscation by Israel on the grounds of being unauthorized. Palestinians in these areas have access to water, electricity, schools, and other state services that are either far more limited or costlier than the same services that the state makes available to Jewish settlers there.

Of the 381 Palestinian homes and other property demolished in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) in 2017 as of November 6, displacing 588 people, Israeli authorities sought to justify most for failure to have a building permit. Israel also destroyed the homes of families in retaliation for attacks on Israelis allegedly carried out by a family member, a violation of the international humanitarian law prohibition on collective punishment.

Freedom of Movement

Israel maintained onerous restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, including checkpoints and the separation barrier, a combination of wall and fence in the West Bank that Israel said it built for security reasons. Israeli-imposed restrictions designed to keep Palestinians far from settlements forced them to take time-consuming detours and restricted their access to agricultural land.

Israel continued construction of the separation barrier, 85 percent of which falls within the West Bank rather than along the Green Line separating Israeli from Palestinian territory, cutting off Palestinians from their agricultural lands and isolating 11,000 Palestinians on the western side of the barrier who are not allowed to travel to Israel and must cross the barrier to access their own property as well as services in the West Bank.

Arbitrary Detention and Detention of Children

Israeli military authorities detained Palestinian protesters, including those who advocated nonviolent protest against Israeli settlements and the route of the separation barrier. Israeli authorities try the majority of Palestinian children incarcerated in the occupied territory in military courts, which have a near-100 percent conviction rate.

Israeli security forces arrested Palestinian children suspected of criminal offenses, usually stone-throwing, often using unnecessary force, questioned them without a family member present, and made them sign confessions in Hebrew, which most did not understand. The Israeli military detained Palestinian children separately from adults during remand hearings and military court trials, but often detained children with adults immediately after arrest. As of June 30, Israeli authorities held 315 Palestinian children in military detention.

As of October 2017, Israel held 453 Palestinian administrative detainees without charge or trial, based on secret evidence, many for prolonged periods. Israel jails many Palestinian detainees and prisoners inside Israel, violating international humanitarian law requiring that they not be transferred outside the occupied territory and restricting the ability of family members to visit them.

Palestinian Authority

PA security services arrested dozens of journalists, activists and opposition members. In September, the PA detained for seven days human rights defender Issa Amro over a Facebook post. Amro also faces charges in Israeli military court for his role in a protest. In June, the PA issued a new cybercrime law, granting the government vast authority to control online activity and blocked access in the West Bank to at least 29 news websites affiliated with Hamas and Fatah factions opposed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Complaints persisted of torture and ill-treatment carried out in the West Bank by PA security services. Arbitrary arrests and torture violate legal obligations that the state of Palestine assumed after it ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture in 2014.

Israel

Israeli authorities have continued to narrow the space for criticism of its policies toward Palestinians. In March, the Knesset passed a law barring entry to foreigners who call for boycotting Israel or settlements. Authorities continue to impose onerous reporting requirements on nongovernment organizations receiving most of their funding from foreign government entities.

Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel who live in “unrecognized” villages in the Negev suffered discriminatory home demolitions on the basis that their homes were built illegally, even though most of those villages existed before the state of Israel was established or were created in the 1950s on land to which Israel transferred Bedouin citizens.

The Israeli government continued its openly stated policy of rendering “miserable” the lives of the roughly 40,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers present in the country in order to induce them to depart. These measures include prolonged detention; restrictions on freedom of movement; ambiguous policies on permission to work; and restricting access to health care. On August 28, the Israeli High Court ruled that authorities could not detain rejected asylum seekers refusing transfer to Rwanda for longer than 60 days and that they could only use force to transfer them if Rwanda agreed to that approach.

Key International Actors

Under commitments stemming from the 1978 Camp David accords, the United States allocated US$3.1 billion in military aid to Israel in 2017 fiscal year. It also allocated $362 million in assistance to Palestinian security forces and economic support to the PA. The International Criminal Court (ICC) Office of the Prosecutor is conducting a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine to determine whether the criteria have been met to merit pursuing a formal investigation into crimes committed in and from Palestine.

In December 2016, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution, with the US abstaining, that said settlements have “no legal validity,” are a “flagrant violation” of international law and a “major obstacle” to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The UN Human Rights Council requested the High Commissioner for Human Rights to create a database of businesses that have enabled or profited from the construction and growth of the settlements. Originally scheduled for March, the council accepted the High Commissioner’s request to defer submission of the database report until the end of 2017 at the latest.

A short flight to Armageddon: Trump & Netanyahu bringing us closer to end of times

May 15, 2018

by George Galloway

RT

The biblical town of Armageddon is but a few miles as the bullets fly from the site of the latest Gaza massacre which has taken us further down the road to the end of times.

Its proximate cause was the latest Man-Child effort of Donald J Trump, this time to relocate the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv, with all the other embassies, to Jerusalem, half of which though annexed by Israel still constitutes Occupied Territory under international law.

It is a criminal offence to “make permanent changes” on “territory acquired by force” – which this territory was in 1967 when Israel seized it by force of arms.

Israel has made many such changes to Occupied Territories. For example, the Golan Heights still belongs to Syria despite the many illegal settlements built there, however much stolen oil is extracted there, or however many field hospitals for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and Al-Qaeda fighters Israel erects there. That like Jerusalem, the Golan has been illegally annexed makes no difference at all in law nor to every other government in the world. Except Trump’s government

In fact every US president in the last 50 years has promised to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, at least whilst running for election. But campaigning is done in poetry, governing is done in prose and no president has followed through on this pledge. Except Donald Trump.

That his decision would entirely predictably lead to a bloodbath may not have occurred to Trump, but it certainly did to the professionals around him, from those aghast at the State Department to those salivating for the provocation, dripping from the moustache of the likes of John Bolton.

There have been many bloodbaths, of course, but there is reason to believe that this one may be of more lasting significance. It surely hastens the political passing of the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas for whom time and circumstance have run their course. It makes it more likely that the Palestinian Mandela, the prisoner Marwan Barghouti, will enter the race – from behind bars – to be his successor and make more likely his success.

It may – temporarily at least – complicate the all-but-consummated courtship between the Saudi Crown Prince MbS (Mohammad bin Salman) and Prime Minister Netanyahu, enjoined by their mutual antipathy towards Iran but now, inevitably, tempered by the Gaza massacre. The religious establishment in Saudi Arabia and the conservative forces are waiting for their excuse to strike back at the man who allegedly hung his relatives upside down in the Ritz-Carlton until their money fell out of their trouser pockets, and the massacre gives them a perfectly Kosher opportunity to do so.

It makes more difficult any complicity by any Arab ruler with any Israeli provocation against Iran. Many Arabs may be hostile to Iran but, after this week, many have rediscovered their antipathy towards Netanyahu.

The already-vaulting opposition to Israeli crimes against the Palestinians in Western countries – which has led to spectacular successes in the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement across several continents – will likely intensify too.

When I joined the movement in solidarity with the Palestinians back in 1975 you could have fitted the supporters of the PLO in Britain into a medium sized hall. Now you couldn’t fit them into Hyde Park or indeed all of Central London. Back then there was genuine affection for the State of Israel in all Western countries. Now nobody moves for Israel out of love, only out of interest. And interest too is waning.

The US is now defunct as a broker in the Middle East, that mantle surely passed smoothly to Russia this week.

For Trump and Netanyahu – on whom both their respective police forces may be closing fast – there is no way back. That they are steeped in blood so far that none could tell whether it is bloodier to go on or to go o’er is self-evident. Trump tweeted on the morning of the massacre that “This is a big day for Israel, a big day.” For once he was quite accurate. Just not in the way he could possibly have imagined.

The 1948 UN Bunche Report

Foreword: In view of the tragic assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte by identified Jewish terrorists on September 17 of this year, the following report has been prepared for the use of Dr. Bunche, Count Bernadotte’s immediate replacement.

This report is a compilation of all identified terrorist attacks on British, American and Arab individuals and entities in the assassination of the British Resident Minister in the Middle East on November 6, 1944 by members of the terrorist Jewish Stern gang to the assassination of Count Bernadotte on September 17, 1948 by members of this same gang of fanatics.

This information is compiled from reports of the US Department of State, the British Foreign Office and various American and British press services.

New York, October 1, 1948

Chronology

1944

1 November 6, 1944, Cairo. Lord Moyne, British Resident Minister in the Middle East, and his driver were assassi¬nated outside the minister’s Cairo residence. Two murderers were involved. One was injured, and both were imme¬diately arrested.

1945

2 January 10, 1945, Cairo. The British supreme military court today put on trial Eliahu Bet-Tsours from Tel Aviv and Eliahu Hakim of Haifa, both admitted members of the Jewish terrorist Stern gang.

3 January 18, 1945, Cairo. The British supreme military court sentenced the murderers of Lord Moyne to death. Both killers admitted their act and also admitted their membership in the Stem gang which they said ordered the killings as a warning to the British not to interfere with future Jewish immigration to Jerusalem.

4 March 22, 1945, Cairo. The two convicted Jewish Stern gang terrorists who murdered Lord Moyne and his driver were hanged today in the Cairo prison British authorities announced.

1946

5 January 12, 1946, Palestine. A train was derailed by Jewish terrorists at Hadera near Haifa by a bomb and robbed of £35,000 in cash. Two British police officials were injured.

6 January 18, 1946, Haifa. Over 900 illegal Jewish immi¬grants were captured off Haifa by the British Royal Navy

7 January 19, 1946, Jerusalem. .Jewish terrorists destroyed a power station and a portion of the Central Jerusalem prison by explosives. Two persons were killed by the police.

8 January 20, 1946, Palestine. Jewish terrorists launched an attack against the British-controlled Givat Olga Coast Guard Station located between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Ten persons were injured and one was killed. Captured papers indicated that the purpose of this raid was to take revenge on the British for their seizure of the refugee ship on January 18. British military authorities in Jerusalem ques¬tioned 3,000 Jews and held 148 in custody.

9 April 25, 1946, Palestine. Jewish terrorists attacked a British military installation near Tel Aviv. This group, which contained a number of young girls, had as its goal the capture of British weapons. British authorities rounded up 1,200 suspects.

10 June 24, 1946, Palestine. The Irgun radio “Fighting Zion” warns that three kidnapped British officers are held as hostages for two Irgun members, Josef Simkohn and Issac Ashbel facing execution as well as 31 Irgun members facing trial.

11 June 27, 1946, Palestine. Thirty Irgun members are sen¬tenced by a British military court to 15 years imprison. One, Benjamin Kaplan was sentenced to life for carrying a firearm.

12 June 29, 1946, Palestine. British military units and police raided Jewish settlements throughout Palestine searching for the leaders of Haganah, a leading Jewish terrorist agency The Jewish Agency for Palestine was occupied and four top official arrested. At the end of June, 1946 2,000 were arrested and four Jews and one British soldier were killed.

13 July 1, 1946, Palestine. British officials announced the discovery of a large arms dump hidden underground at Meshek Yagur. 2,659 men and 59 women were detained for the three day operation in which 27 settlements were searched. For were killed and 80 were injured.

14 July 3, 1946, Palestine. Palestine High Commissioner Lt. General Sir Alan Cunningham commuted to life impris¬onment the death sentences of Josef Simkhon and Issac Ashbel, Irgun members.

15 July 4, 1946, Tel Aviv. British officers, Captains K. Spencer, C. Warburton and A. Taylor who had been kidnapped by the Irgun on June 18 and held as hostages for the lives of Simkohn and Ashbel, were released in Tel Aviv unharmed. At this time, Irgun issued a declaration of war against the British claiming that they had no alternative but to fight.

16 July 22, 1946, Jerusalem. The west wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem which housed British Military Headquarters and other governmental offices was destroyed at 12:57 PM by explosives planted in the cellar by members of the Irgun terrorist gang. By the 26 of July, the casualties were 76 persons killed, 46 injured and 29 still missing in the rubble. The dead included many British, Arabs and Jews.

17 July 23, l946 Jerusalem. The Irgun Zvai Leumi terrorist group takes responsibility for the King David bombing but blames the British, calling them “tyrants.”

18 July 24, 1946, London. The British government released a White Paper that accuses the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gangs of “a planned movement of sabotage and violence” under the direction of the Jewish Agency and asserts that the June 29 arrest of Zionist leaders was the cause of the bombing.

19 July 28, 1946, Jerusalem. The British Palestine Commander, Lt. General Sir Evelyn Barker, banned frater¬nization by British troops with Palestine Jews whom he stated “cannot be absolved of responsibility for terroristic acts.” The order states that this will punish “the race . . . by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt for them”

21 July 30, 1946, Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is placed under a 22-hour-a-day curfew as 20,000 British troops began a house-to-house sweep for terrorists. The city is sealed off from the rest of Jerusalem and troops are ordered to shoot to kill any curfew violators.

22 July 31, 1946, Tel Aviv. A large cache of weapons, exten¬sive counterfeiting equipment and $1,000,000 in counterfeit Government bonds were discovered in Tel Aviv’s largest synagogue.

23 July 31, 1946, Haifa. Two ships have arrived at Haifa with a total of 3,200 illegal Jewish immigrants.

24 August 2, 1946, Tel Aviv. British military authorities ended the curfew in Tel Aviv after detaining 500 persons for further questioning. A second arms dump was discov¬ered on July 1 in a school building.

25 August 2, 1946, Jerusalem. The Palestine Government disclosed that 91 persons were killed and 45 injured in the King David bombing.

26 August 2, 1946, Jerusalem. Jerusalem police announced the arrest of Itzhak Yestemitsky second man in the Stern gang.

27 August 12, 1946, London. The British Government announced that it will allow no more unscheduled immigration into Palestine and that those seeking entry into that country will be sent to Cyprus and other areas under detention. Declaring that such immi¬gration threatens a civil war with the Arab population, it charges a “minority of Zionist extremists” with attempting to force an unacceptable solution of the Palestine problem.

28 August 12, 1946, Haifa. Two ships carrying a total of 1,300 Jewish refugees arrived at Haifa. The port area was isolated on August 11 by British military and naval units. The first deportation ship sailed for Cyprus with 500 Jews on board.

29 August 13, 1946, Haifa. Three Jews were killed and seven wounded when British troops were compelled to fire on a crowd of about 1,000 persons frying to break into the port area of Haifa. Two Royal Navy ships with 1,300 illegal Jewish immigrants on board sailed for Cyprus. Another ship with 600 illegal immigrants was captured and confined in the Haifa harbor.

30 August 26, 1946, Palestine. British military units searched the coastal villages of Casera and Sadoth Yam for three Jews who bombed the transport “Empire Rival” last week Eighty-five persons, including the entire male popu¬lation of one of the villages were sent to the Rafa detention center.

31 August 27, 1946, Palestine. During the searches conducted on August 26, an explosive limpet mine similar to the one used on the “Empire Rival” was found.

32 August 29, 1946, Jerusalem. the British Government announced the commutation to life imprisonment of the death sentences imposed on l8 Jewish youths convicted of bombing the Haifa railroad shops.

33 August 30, 1946, Palestine. British military units discov¬ered arms and munitions dumps in the Jewish farming vil¬lages of Dorot and Ruhama.

35 September 9, 1946, Tel Aviv. two British officers were killed in an explosion in a public building.

36 September 9, 1946, Haifa. An Arab constable was killed.

37 September 10, 1946, Palestine. British troops imposed a curfew and arrested 101 Jews and wounded two in a search for saboteurs in Tel Aviv and neighboring Ramat Gan. Irgun terrorist group took the action against the railways on September 8, as a protest.

39 September 15, 1946, Tel Aviv. Jewish terrorists attacked a police station on the coast near Tel Aviv but were driven off by gunfire.

40 October 2, 1946, Tel Aviv. British military units and police seized 5O Jews in a Tel Aviv cafe after a Jewish home was blown up. This home belonged to a Jewish woman who had refused to pay extortion money to the Irgun ter¬rorist gang.

41 October 6, 1944 Jerusalem. An RAF man was killed by gunfire

42 October 8, 1946, Jerusalem. Two British soldiers were killed when their truck detonated a land mine outside Jerusalem. A leading Arab figure was wounded in a simi¬lar mine explosion in Jerusalem and more road mines were found near Government House.

43 October 31, 1946, Rome. The British Embassy in Rome was damaged by a bomb, believed to have been planted by Jewish terrorists.

44 November 3, 1946, Palestine. Two Jews and two Arabs were killed in clashes between Arabs and a group of Jews attempting to establish a settlement at Lake Hula in northern Palestine.

45 November 4, 1946, Rome. Italian authorities released a letter in which the Jewish terrorist gang, Irgun, took credit for the October 31 embassy bombing.

46 November 5, 1946, Palestine. British authorities released the following eight Jewish Agency leaders from the Latrun concentration camp where they had been held since June 29: Moshe Shertok, Dr. Issac Greenbaum, Dr. Bernard Joseph, David Remiz, David Hacohen, David Shingarevsky, Joseph Shoffman and Mordecai Shatter. A total of 2,550 Haganah suspects have also been released as well as 779 Jews arrested in the wake of the King David bombing.

47 November 7, 1946, Palestine. Railroad traffic was suspended for 24 hours throughout Palestine following a fourth Irgun attack on railway facilities in two days.

48 November 9 through November 13, 1946, Palestine. Nineteen persons, eleven British soldiers and policemen and eight Arab constables, were killed in Palestine during this period as Jewish terrorists, using land mines and suit¬case bombs, increased their attacks on railroad stations, trains and even streetcars.

49 November 14, 1946, London. The Board of Deputies of British Jews condemned Jewish terrorist groups who threatened to export their terrorism to England.

50 November 18, 1946, Tel Aviv. Police in Tel Aviv attacked Jews, assaulting many and firing into houses. Twenty Jews were injured in fights with British troops following the death on November 17 of three policemen and an RAF sergeant in a land mine explosion.

51 Five persons were injured when a bomb exploded in the Jerusalem tax office.

52 December 2 through December 5,1946, Palestine. Ten persons, including six British soldiers, were killed in bomb and land-mine explosions.

53 December 3,1946, Jerusalem. A member of the Stern gang was killed in an aborted hold-up attempt

54 December 26,1946, Palestine. Armed Jewish terrorists raided two diamond factories in Nathanya and Tel Aviv and escaped with nearly $107,000 in diamonds, cash and bonds. These raids signaled an end to a two- week truce during the World Zionist Congress.

1947

55 January 1, 1947, Jerusalem. Dov Gruner was sentenced to hang by a British military court for taking part in a raid on the Ramat Gan police headquarters in April of 1946.

56 January 2, 1947, Palestine. A wave of terror swept Palestine as Jewish terrorists staged bombings and machine gun attacks in five cities. Casualties were low. Homemade flame-throwers were used in several cases. Pamphlets seized warned that the Irgun had again declared war against the British and Arabs of Palestine.

57 January 4, 1947, Jerusalem. British soldiers have been ordered to wear sidearms at all times and were forbidden to enter any cafe or restaurant

58 January 5, 1947, Egypt ,Eleven British troops were injured in a hand grenade attack on a train carrying troops to Palestine. The attack took place near Benha, 25 miles from Cairo.

59 January 8, 1947, Palestine. British police arrested 32 per¬sons suspected of being members of the Irgun terrorist gang’s “Black Squad” in raids on Rishon-el Zion and Rehoboth.

60 January 12, 1947, Haifa. A single terrorist drove a truck filled with high explosives into the central police station and exploded it, killing two British policemen and two Arab constables and injuring 140 others. The terrorist escaped. This action ended a 10-day lull in the violence and the Stern gang took the credit for it

61 January 13, 1947, Haifa. British soldiers and police screened 872 persons in Haifa and detained 10 for further questioning as Arabs and Jews both condemned the bombing.

62 January 14, 1947, Jerusalem. Yehudi Katz is sentenced to life in prison by a Jerusalem court for robbing a bank in Jaffa in September of 1946 to obtain funds for the terrorists.

64 January 22, 1947, Palestine. Sir Harry Gurney, Chief Secretary, stated that the British administration was taxing Palestine $2,400,000 to pay for sabotage by the terrorists.

65 January 22, 1947, London. Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones informed the House of Commons 73 British subjects were murdered by Palestine terrorists in 1946 and

“no culprits have been convicted.”

66 January 27, 1947, London. Britain’s conference on Palestine, boycotted by the Jews, reconvened. Jamal el Husseini, Palestine Arab leader, declared that the Arab world was unalterably opposed to partition as a solution to the problem. The session then adjourned.

67 January 29, 1947, London. It was officially announced that the British Cabinet decided to partition Palestine.

68 January 29, 1947, Jerusalem. Irgun forces released former Maj. H. Collins, a British banker, who they kidnapped on January 26 from his home. He had been badly beaten. On January 28, the Irgun released Judge Ralph Windham who had been kidnapped in Tel Aviv on January 27 while trying a case. These men had been taken as hostages for Dov Bela Gruner, an Irgun member under death sentence for terrorism. The British High Commissioner, Lt Gen.. Sir Alan Cunningham, had threatened martial law unless the two men were returned unharmed.

69 January 31, 1947, Jerusalem. General Cunningham ordered the wives and children of all British civilians to leave Palestine at once. About 2,000 are involved. This order did not apply to the 5,000 Americans in Palestine.

70 February 3, 1947, Jerusalem. The Palestine Government issued a 7-day ultimatum to the Jewish Agency demanding that it state “categorically and at once” whether it and the supreme Jewish Council in Palestine will call on the Jewish community by February 10 for “cooperation with the police and armed forces in bringing to justice the members of the terrorist groups.” This request was publicly rejected by Mrs. Goldie Meyerson, head of the Jewish Agency’s political department

71 February 4, 1947, Jerusalem. British District Commissioner James Pollock disclosed a plan for military occupation of three sectors of Jerusalem and orders nearly 1,000 Jews to evacuate the Rehavia, Schneler and German quarters by noon, February 6.

72 February 5, 1947, Jerusalem. The Vaad Leumi rejected the British ultimatum while the Irgun passed out leaflets that it was prepared to fight to the death against the British authority. The first 700 of some 1,500 British women and children ordered to evacuate Palestine leave by plane and train for Egypt. British authorities, preparing for military action, order other families from sections of Tel Aviv and Haifa which will be turned into fortified military areas.

73 February 9, 1947, Haifa. British troops removed 650 ille¬gal Jewish immigrants from the schooner ‘Negev” at Haifa and after a struggle forced them aboard the ferry ‘Emperor Haywood” for deportation to Cyprus.

74 February 14, 1947, Jerusalem. The British administration revealed that Lt Gen. Sir Evelyn Barker, retiring British commander in Palestine, had confirmed the death sen¬tences of three Irgun members on February 12 before leav¬ing for England. The three men, Dov Ben Rosenbaum, Eliezer Ben Kashani and Mordecai Ben Alhachi, had been sentenced on February 10 to be hanged for carrying firearms. A fourth, Haim Gorovetzky, received a life sen¬tence because of his youth. Lt Gen. G. MacMillian arrived in Jerusalem on February 13 to succeed Gen. Barker.

75 February 15, 1947, Palestine. The Sabbath was the set¬ting for sporadic outbreaks of violence which included the murder of an Arab in Jaffa and of a Jew in Bne Brok, the kidnapping of a Jew in Peta Tikvah and the burning of a Jewish club in Haifa.

76 March 9, 1947, Hadera. A British army camp was attacked.

77 March 10, 1947, Haifa. A Jew, suspected of being an informer, was murdered by Jewish terrorists.

78 March 12, 1947, Jerusalem. The British Army pay corps was dynamited in Jerusalem and one soldier killed.

79 March 12, 1947, Palestine. British military units captured most of the 800 Jews whose motor ship “Susanna” ran the British blockade and was beached north of Gaza on this date. A British naval escort brought the “Ben Hecht,” the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation’s first known immigrant ship, into Haifa, and its 599 passengers were shipped to Cyprus. The British arrested the crew, which included 18 US. seamen.

80 March 13, 1947, Jerusalem. British authorities announced 78 arrests as a result of unofficial Jewish cooperation, but two railroads were attacked, resulting in two deaths, and eight armed men robbed a Tel Aviv bank of $65,000.

81 March 14, 1947, Palestine. Jewish terrorists blew up part of an oil pipeline in Haifa and a section of the rail line at Beer Yakov.

82 March 16, 1947, Jerusalem. The Jewish Agency building was bombed.

83 March 17, 1947, Jerusalem. British authorities ended martial law which had kept 300,000 Jews under house arrest for 16 days and tied up most economic activity

84 March 17, 1947, Palestine. A military court sentenced Moshe Barazani to be hanged for possessing a hand grenade.

85 March 18, 1947, Palestine. Terrorist leaflets admitted the murder of Michael Shnell on Mount Carmel as an informer.

86 March 22, 1947, Palestine. British officials announced the arrest of five known terrorists and the discovery near Petah Tikvah of the body of Leon Meshiah, a Jew presum¬ably slain as a suspected informer

87 March 26, 1947, London. Britain’s Privy Council rejected the appeal of the death sentence against Dov Bela Gruner.

88 March 28, 1947, Haifa. The Irgun blew up the Iraq Petroleum Co. pipeline in Haifa.

89 March 29, 1947, Palestine. A British army officer was murdered by Jewish terrorists when they ambushed a party of horsemen near the Ramle camp. A raid by terrorists on a Tel Aviv bank yielded $109,000.

90 March 30, 1947, Palestine. Units of the British Royal Navy, answering an SOS, took the disabled “Moledeth” with 1,600 illegal Jewish refugees on board under tow some 50 miles outside Palestinian waters.

91 March 30, 1947, Tel Aviv. The Stem gang killed the wife of a British soldier.

92 March 31, 1947, Haifa. Jewish terrorists dynamited the British-owned Shell-Mex oil tanks in Haifa, starting a fire that destroyed a quarter-mile of the waterfront The damage was set at more than $1,000,000, and the British government in Palestine has stated that the Jewish community will have to pay for it

93 April 2, 1947, Cyprus. The “Ocean Vigour’ was damaged by a bomb in Famagusta Harbor, Cyprus. The Haganah admitted the bombing.

94 April 3, 1947, Jerusalem. A court in Jerusalem sentenced Daniel Azulai and Meyer Feinstein, members of the Irgun terrorist gang, to death for the October 30 attack on the Jerusalem railroad station. The Palestine Supreme Court admitted an appeal of Dov Bela Gruner’s death sentence.

95 April 3, 1947. The transport “Empire Rival” was dam¬aged by a time bomb while en route from Haifa to Port Said in Egypt

96 April 7, 1947, Jerusalem. The High Court denied a new appeal against the death sentence of Dov Bela Gruner, and a British patrol killed Moshe Cohen.

97 April 8, 1947, Jerusalem. Jewish terrorists killed a British constable in revenge for the Cohen death.

98 April 9, 1947, Palestine. The Palestine Government abandoned “statutory martial law” in the face of unfavor¬able publicity but granted itself military dictatorship powers in “controlled areas” it may impose.

99 April 10, 1947, London. The British Government requested France and Italy to prevent Jews from embarking for Palestine.

100 April 11, 1947, Jerusalem. Asher Eskovitch, a Jew, was beaten to death by Moslems when he entered the forbidden Mosque of Omar.

102 April 14, 1947, Tel Aviv. A British naval unit boarded the refugee ship “Guardian” and seized it along with 2,700 passengers after a gun battle in which two immigrants were killed and 14 wounded.

103 April 16, 1947, Haifa. In spite of threats of reprisal from the Irgun, the British hanged Dov Bela Gruner and three other Irgun members at Acre Prison on Haifa Bay. Jewish communities were kept under strict curfew for several hours. Soon after the deaths were announced, a time bomb was found in the Colonial Office in London but was defused.

105 April 18, 1947, Palestine. Irgun’s reprisals for the Gruner execution were an attack on a field dressing station near Nethanaya where one sentry was killed, an attack on an armored car in Tel Aviv where one bystander was killed and harmless shots at British troops in Haifa.

106 April 19,1947, Haifa. British naval units exploded depth charges in Haifa harbor to prevent an underwater assault by Jewish “frogmen” on three British deportation vessels that took the “Guardian’s” passengers to Cyprus.

107 April 20, 1947, Tel Aviv. A series of bombings by Jewish terrorists in retaliation for the hanging of convicted terrorist Gruner injured 12 British soldiers.

108 April 21, 1947, Jerusalem. Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani, condemned terrorists, killed themselves in prison a few hours before they were scheduled to be hanged. They blew themselves up with bombs smuggled to them in hollowed-out oranges.

109 April 22, 1947, Palestine. A troop train arriving from Cairo was bombed outside Rehovoth with five soldiers and three civilians killed and 39 persons injured.

110 April 23, 1947, London. The British First Lord of the Admiralty, Viscount Hall, defended the Labor Government’s policy in Palestine and he acknowledged in the House of Lords that Britain would not “carry out a policy of which it did not approve” despite any UN action. He blamed contributions from American Jews to the Palestine terrorists as aiding terrorism there and cited the toll since August 1, 1945: 113 killed, 249 wounded, 168 Jews convicted, 28 sentenced to death, four executed, 33 terrorists slain in battles. Viscount Samuel urged increased immigration.

111 April 23, 1947, Palestine. The Irgun proclaimed its own “military courts” to “try” British troops and policemen who resisted them.

112 April 24, 1947, Palestine. Lt. General Sir Alan Cunningham, Palestine High Commissioner flew to Egypt and requested Lt General Sir Miles Dempsey, Middle-East land force commander, for more troops to be sent to Palestine.

115 May 4,1947, Acre. The walls of Acre prison were blast¬ed open by an Irgun bomb squad and 251 Jewish and Arab prisoners escaped after a gun battle in which 15 Jews and 1 Arab were killed, 32 (including six British guards) were injured and 23 escapists were recaptured. The Palestine Government promised no extra punishment if the 189 escapees still at large will surrender.

116 May 6, 1947, Jerusalem. former British Commando Sgt Dov Bernard Cohen, head of the Acre bomb squad, was fatally wounded in the attack.

117 May 4, 1947, New York. The Political Action Committee for Palestine ran a series of advertisements in New York newspapers seeking funds to buy parachutes for young European Jews planning to crash the Palestine immigra¬tion barrier by air.

118 May 8, 1947, Tel Aviv. A Jew was ambushed and shot to death by an Arab group near Tel Aviv, and three Jewish-owned Tel Aviv shops whose owners refused to contribute money to Jewish terrorist groups were burned down.

120 May 12, 1947, Jerusalem. The British authorities announced that 3l2 Jewish political prisoners were held in Kenya, East Africa, 247 in Latrun and 34 in Bethlehem, Palestine.

121 May 15, 1947, The Stern gang killed two British lieutenants and injured seven other persons with two derailments and three bridge demolitions.

122 May 16, 1947, Palestine. On the fifth day of another ter¬rorist drive, Haifa Assistant Police Superintendent, Robert Schindler, a German Jew, was murdered by the Stern gang, and a British constable was killed on the Mt. Carmel-Haifa road near Jerusalem.

123 May 17, 1947, Haifa. The 1,200-ton Haganah freighter “Trade Winds” was seized by the Royal Navy off the Lebanon coast and escorted into Haifa, and over 1,000 ille¬gal immigrants were disembarked pending transfer to Cyprus.

124 May 19, 1947, London. The British government protested to the United States government against American fund-raising drives for Palestine terrorist groups. The complaint referred to a “Letter to the Terrorists of Palestine” by playwright Ben Hecht, American League for a Free Palestine co-chairman, first published in the New York ‘Post” on May 15. The ad said, “We are out to raise millions for you.”

125 May 22, 1947, Palestine. Arabs attacked a Jewish labor camp in southern Palestine, retaliating for a Haganah raid on the Arabs near Tel Aviv, May 20. Some 40,000 Arab and Jewish workers united the same day in a one-day strike against all establishments operated by the British War Ministry

126 May 23, 1947, Palestine. A British naval party boarded the immigrant ship “Mordei Haghettoath” off South Palestine and took control of its 1,500 passengers. Two British soldiers were convicted in Jerusalem of abandoning a jeep and army mail under a terrorist attack.

127 May 27, 1947, Germany. Jewish underground migration officials in Frankfort-am-Main declared they hoped to transport 1,000,000 Jews from Europe to Palestine, 30,000 of them this summer. The Costa Rican ship “Colony Trader” has been detained at Gibraltar under suspicion of its use for smuggling illegal immigrants into Palestine. London is investigating reports that non-Jewish Poles and Slavs in DP camps are being recruited for the Palestine army. Other investigations are being conducted into persistent reports that Soviet Russia has been supplying technical advisors to The Jewish terrorist groups.

128 May 28, 1947, Syria. Fawzi el-Kawukji who spent the war years in Germany after leading the 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine, told reporters in Damascus that an unfavorable decision by the UN inquiry group would be the signal for war against the Jews in Palestine. “We must prove that in case” of an Anglo-American war with Russia, “we can be more dangerous or useful to them than the Jews,” he added.

129 May 28, 1947, Haifa. Jewish terrorists blew up a water main and a shed in the Haifa oil dock areas and made three attacks on railway lines in the Lydda and Haifa areas.

130 May 31, 1947, Haifa. The Haganah ship “Yehuda Halevy” arrived under British naval escort with 399 illegal Jewish immigrants, the first from Arab territories. They were immediately transshipped to Cyprus.

132 June 5, 1947, Washington. President Truman asked all persons in the US. to refrain from helping Palestine terrorists. The American Jewish Committee and Jewish Labor Committee condemned Ben Hecht’s campaign for Palestine terrorist funds.

133 June 5, 1947, Tel Aviv. Jewish terrorist mines wrecked two trains near Tel Aviv and Haifa and the Athlit railroad station but without casualties.

134 June 6, 1947, London. Scotland Yard official now acknowledge that a total of 20 letter bombs have been found.

135 June 6, 1947, New York. Secretary General of the UN, Trygve Lie has forwarded a request to all countries a request by the British that they guard their frontiers against departure of illegal immigrants bound for Palestine.

136 June 18, 1947, Tel Aviv. Haganah disclosed that one of its men was killed by a booby trap which foiled an Irgun plot to blow up British Military Headquarters in Tel Aviv.

137 June 19, 1947, Jerusalem. Major Roy Farran, held in connection with the disappearance of a 16-year-old Jew, escaped from custody in the army barracks in Jerusalem.

138 June 28, 1947, Palestine. The terrorist Stern gang opened fire on British soldiers waiting in line outside a Tel Aviv theater, killing three and wounding two. Another Briton is killed and several wounded in a Haifa hotel. This action was claimed by Jewish terrorists to be in retaliation for British brutality and the alleged slaying of a missing 16 year old Jew, Alexander Rubowitz while he was being held in an Army barracks on May 6.

139 June 29, 1947, New York. The UN Committee votes 9-0 to condemn the acts of terrorism as “flagrant disregard” of the UN appeal for an interim truce as Stern terrorists wounded four more British soldiers on a beach at Herzila. Major Roy Alexander Farran surrendered voluntarily after his escape from custody in Jerusalem on June 19. He had been arrested in connection with the Rubowitz case.

140 June 30, 1947, Jerusalem. The Palestine government permitted oil companies to raise prices of benzene nearly 10% to pay for $1 million damage suffered when Jewish terrorists blew up oil installations at Haifa on March 31.

141 July 1, 1947, Jerusalem. The British Government rejected the UN Commission’s move to halt the execution of three Irgun members convicted of terrorism and also said that the UN Assembly truce resolution of May 15 had no bearing on “the normal processes of the administration of justice” in Palestine.

142 July 2, 1947, Haifa. Irgun members robbed a Haifa bank of $3,200 while both the Stem gang and the Irgun warned the British that their “provocative” acts in Palestine must end before a truce can be effected. The Guatemalan and Czech members of the UN Commission visited two Jewish convicts in Acre Prison. In Pretoria, South Africa, Prime Minister Smuts, who was a party to the Balfour Declaration, said “the promise of a national home in Palestine never meant the whole of Palestine.” He favored partition into Arab and Jewish states.

143 July 12, 1947, Jerusalem. Dr. Ariem Altman, president of the United Zionist Revisionists, told a party rally in Jerusalem that the Revisionists would settle for nothing less than an unpartitioned free Jewish state in Palestine and Trans-Jordan. Irgun announced in Jerusalem that two British sergeants kidnapped in Nathanaya are being held in Tel Aviv and have been sentenced to death by Irgun court-martial.

144 July 14, 1947, Nathanya. The British imposed martial law and placed the 15,000 inhabitants of Nathanya under house arrest. They made 68 arrests and sentenced 21 persons to 6 months each in the Latrun detention camp.

145 July 17, 1947, Nathanya. The Irgun in five mine opera-lions against military traffic to and from Nathanya killed one Briton and injured 16.

146 July 17, 1947, Nethanya. Mines killed a second Briton and injured seven.

147 July 18, 1947, Haifa. The American-manned Haganah refugee ship “Exodus 1947” (formerly the ‘President Warfield”) was escorted into Haifa by British naval units after a battle in which the American first mate, William Bernstein and two immigrants were killed and more than 30 injured. The blockade runner itself was badly damaged. The remainder of the 4,554 passengers, the largest group of ille¬gal immigrants to sail for Palestine in a single ship, were put aboard British prison ships for removal to Cyprus. The American captain, Bernard Marks, and his crew were arrested. The ship sailed from France.

148 July 19, 1947, Haifa. Rioting, quickly suppressed, broke out among the passengers of the “Exodus 1947” when they learned they were to be returned to France

149 July 19, 1947, Jerusalem. The Palestine Government charges that a Jewish “campaign of lawlessness, murder and sabotage” has cost 70 lives and $6 million in damage since 1940.

150 July 21, 1947, Jerusalem. Before officially admitting that 4,529 passengers of the “Exodus 1947” who had been trans¬ferred to three British ships, were being sent not to Cyprus but back to France, the Palestine Government took the pre-caution of first placing Jerusalem’s 90,000 Jews under nightly house arrest.

151 July 23, 1947, Haifa. Haganah sank the British transport “Empire Lifeguard” in Haifa harbor as it was discharging 300 Jewish immigrants who had officially been admitted to Palestine under quota. Sixty-five immigrants were killed and 40 were wounded. The British were able to refloat the ship.

152 July 24, 1947, Amman, Trans-Jordan. Seven members of the UN Palestine Commission flew to Amman and were informed by Jordanian Premier Samir Pasha el Rifai that: (1) Palestine belongs to the Arabs; (2) the Arabs never accepted the Balfour Declaration; (3) the Jews are imperialistic invaders whose immigration “must be stopped forthwith”; (5) Palestine should get unpartitioned independence under the Arab majority; (6) the plight of European refugees does not concern Palestine; (7) the Arabs will justly resist with force any unfavorable decision.

153 July 26, 1947. Jewish terrorists blew up the Iraqi Petroleum Co. pipeline 12 miles east of Haifa and destroyed a Mt. Carmel radar station.

154 July 26, 1947, Palestine. Two British soldiers were killed by a booby trap near Jerusalem, raising the week’s violence toll to 12 killed and 75 wounded.

155 July 26, 1947, Palestine. Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, announced from his secret headquarters that Haganah had planned the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946 in which 91 persons were killed.

156 July 27, 1947, Palestine. An ambush and mines cost the British seven more casualties, all wounded.

157 July 28, 1947, Haifa. Two small Haganah ships loaded with 1,174 Jews from North Africa were intercepted by British naval units off Palestine and brought into Haifa. The illegal immigrants were transshipped aboard British transports and taken to Cyprus.

158 July 29, 1947, Palestine. The British authorities hanged three Irgunists in Acre prison despite appeals from Jewish leaders. The condemned, Myer Nakar, Absalom Habib and Jacob Weiss, had fought in the Czech underground during the war. They were convicted of blowing up Acre Prison on May 4 and liberating 200 Arabs and Jews.

159 July 29, 1947, France. The 4,429 “Exodus 1947” illegal immigrants who sailed from Sate, France, July 11 for Palestine only to be shipped back by the British aboard three transports, refused to debark as the vessels anchored off Port de Douc, France. Only a few who were ill went ashore. The French government informed the refugees that they do not have to debark but will be welcomed if they do. The transports are the “Runnymede Park,” “Ocean Vigour” and “Empire Valour”

160 July 30, 1947, Palestine. Irgun terrorists announced that they have hanged two British sergeants, Marvyn Paice and Jifford Martin, whom they had held as hostages since July 12, for “crimes against the Jewish community.” The two were seized when death sentences on the three Irgun members were confirmed by the British authorities. Two more British soldiers were killed by a land mine near Hadera. British troops attacked the Jewish colony of Pardes Hanna in revenge for the murders.

161 July 31, 1947, Nathanya. The bodies of the two murdered British sergeants were found hanging from eucalyp¬tus trees one and a half miles from Nathanya about 530 AM. A booby trap blew Martin’s body to bits when it was cut down. Enraged British troops stormed into Tel Aviv, wrecked shops, attacked pedestrians and sprayed a bus with gunfire killing five Jews: two men, two women and a boy.

162 August 1, 1947, Tel Aviv. Thirty-three Jews are injured in an anti-British riot at Tel Aviv during the funeral procession of five civilians killed by British soldiers on July 31. In Jerusalem a Jewish terrorist attack on the British security zone in Rehavia was repulsed with one attacker killed and two captured.

163 August 2, 1947, Tel Aviv. The body of an unidentified Jew was found on a road near Tel Aviv. He was believed to have been kidnapped by men in British uniforms two weeks ago. Total casualties in Palestine since mid-July: 25 persons slain, 144 wounded. The dead include 15 Britons, two Jewish terrorists, eight civilians. Anti-British slogans, swastikas and dollar signs are painted onto British consulates in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.

164 August 3, 1947, Palestine. Haganah warned in Jerusalem that the Britons who killed five Jews in Tel Aviv On July 31 will be found and punished.

165 August 4, 1947, Paris. An Irgun leader in Paris states that his organization has sentenced high British military and civilian officials in Palestine to death “in absentia” and will hang them upon capture.

166 August 4, 1947, Palestine. British troops blew up a Jewish house in a Jerusalem suburb in which arms were found. Jewish terrorists robbed Barclays’ Bank in Tel Aviv of $5200 and a Haganah member was killed.

167 August 5, 1947, Palestine. Striking at dawn, British secu¬rity forces arrested 35 leading Zionists and sent them to the Latrun detention camp in an attempt to wipe out the Irgun leadership. In reprisal, Irgunists blew up the Department of Labor in Jerusalem, killing three British constables. Those arrested included Mayor Israel Rokach of Tel Aviv; Mayor Oved Ben Ami of Nathanya; Mayor Abraham Krinitzki of Ramat Gan, Arieh Altman, president of the radical Revisionist Party; Menahem Arber, leader of the Revisionist youth organization, B’rith Trumpeldor, which is outlawed; Max Kritzman, Dov Bela Gruner’s attorney, and David Stern, brother of the late founder of the Stem gang.All those arrested except the three mayors were Revisionists. Among many papers confiscated was corre¬spondence from Soviet Russian agents in Italy and Bulgaria and extensive plans to poison the water supply of the non-Jewish parts of Jerusalem with botulism, anthrax and other bacteria. Bacteria was supplied by Soviet sources through Bulgaria.

168 August 5, 1947, England. Anti-Semitic outbreaks slackened after five days of rock throwing, window-smashing and other incidents including daubing Jewish businesses with swastikas and numerous assaults on British Jews. These incidents occurred in Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff (Wales), Leeds, London and Birmingham as retaliation for the murder of two British sergeants in Palestine. Thirty-eight persons were arrested in Liverpool but in the main, the British police ignored the rioters and permitted them to run their course.

169 August 8, 1947, Palestine. The Bank of Sharon in Ramat Can was robbed by Jewish terrorists of $8,000.

170 August 14, 1947, Geneva. The UN Special Subcom¬mittee on Palestine returned to Geneva after a seven-day tour of DP camps in Austria and Germany. The tour took the group to Munich, Vienna, Berlin and Hamburg. In Berlin it heard reports August 13 from General Lucius D. Clay, US. Military Governor. Clay testified that anti-Semitism is growing very sharply among the ranks of the US. military units in the US. Zones of Austria and Germany because of the violent, asocial and criminal behavior of the Eastern European DPs, all of whom are Jewish. He recommended that these DPs be allowed to enter Palestine before some incident with American sol¬diers, who have been beaten, robbed and killed by Jewish DPs, leads to severe spontaneous reactions on the part of other soldiers. His views were seconded very strongly by Sir Brian Robertson, Deputy British Military Governor.

171 August 15, 1947, Palestine. A mine derailed a Cairo-Haifa troop train north of Lydda, killing the engineer, and Irgun terrorists claimed the incident was part of its campaign to disrupt all the Palestine rail traffic.

172 August 16, 1947, Palestine. Arab-Jewish clashes have brought death to l2 Arabs and l3 Jews and heavy property destruction this week in the regions of Jewish Tel Aviv and Arab Jaffa. Interracial strife was renewed on August 10 when Arabs killed four Jews in a Tel Aviv cafe, in reprisal for the deaths of two Arabs in a Haganah raid in Fega two months ago. Haganah responded to the Arab actions by bombing a house in an Arab orange grove near Tel Aviv, killing eleven Arabs, including a woman and four children. British military curfews imposed on August 13 on slum districts between modern Tel Aviv and Jaffa have failed to prevent mounting casualties. British military authorities, citing captured intelligence and statements from Jewish defectors from terrorist organizations, state that it now appears that the Jewish terrorists are beginning to attack Arabs where ever they found them because Jews wish the Arabs to be driven out of Palestine entirely.

173 August 18, 1947, Palestine. The shops of five Jewish merchants in Tel Aviv were destroyed by the Irgun because the owners refused to give money to that organization.

174 August 23, 1947, Jerusalem. British authorities reported that five Arabs in one family; two men, one woman and two children, were murdered by Jewish terrorists as retaliation for the British arrest of two Irgun leaders on August15.

175 September 9, 1947. Hamburg, Germany. In a bitter three-hour fight aboard the “Runnymede Park,” 350 British troops completed a two-day forced debarkation of 4,300 “Exodus 1947” illegal Jewish refugees from three ships in Hamburg, Germany. First ashore yesterday were the “Ocean Vigour’s”1,406; a few put up token resistance and five passengers sustained minor injuries. Early today, the “Empire Rival’s” 1,420 passengers debarked peaceably after a home made bomb was found in the ship’s hold. Many of the “Runnymede Park’s” 1,485 passengers fiercely resisted the debarkation process and British military units had to use fire hoses and truncheons to rout

resisters below decks. The Jews were taken ashore screaming “Nazis” to the British. “Runnymede Park” casualties, officially, were 24 Jews and three Britons injured, with 50 leaders of the resis¬tance on that ship taken to jail. German police broke up a Hamburg demonstration by 1,300 Jewish DPs from the Bergen-Belsen camp, where British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin was hanged in effigy on September 7. The debarked “Exodus” passengers were interned in Poppendorf camp near Luebeck for screening by nationalities and at first all of them refused to cooperate with British authorities until the passengers were threatened with a diet of bread and water.

176 September 10, 1947, Washington D.C. Secretary of State George C. Marshall disclosed that the US. had urged Britain to reconsider sending the “Exodus” group to Germany, but Britain replied that there were no facilities for housing them elsewhere because the French did not want them and there were a number of vacant detention camps in Germany.

177 September 11, 1947, Paris. The French government has now announced that it would admit the “Exodus” refugees if they were not forcibly deported from Germany and on the understanding that they will be admitted eventually to Palestine.

178 September 7, 1947, Paris. French police state a Stern gang plot to attack London with home-made fire extin¬guisher bombs from the air was thwarted through the cooperation of Reginald Gilbert of St Louis, Missouri, a student and wartime RCAF and AAF pilot He was taken into custody with Rabbi Baruch Korif, of New York, co-¬chairman of the Political Action Committee for Palestine, and Judith Rosenberger, Hungarian-born Stern gang member, as the three started to enter a private plane last night at Toussus-le-Noble field near Versailles. Gilbert informed French police that Korif had approached him in Paris a week ago with an offer for flying a bombing mission over London the day of the“ Exodus” illegal immigrant landings in Germany. Gilbert accepted for some other pilot who would actu¬ally perform the mission. He at once notified Paris police, then worked with them and Scotland Yard while pretending to go through with the Stern gang’s plot. Korff was charged in Paris on September 9 with illegal possession of bombs he was intending to drop on London. He began a hunger strike. Paris police state that nine other conspirators were in custody.

179 September 12, 1947, Palestine. Irgun has threatened to assassinate British representatives in the US. Zone of Germany and all British delegations there are under 24-hour guard, the US. command announced in Frankfurt-on-the Main. A probe of Irgun thefts from US. army ammunition depots in Germany was reported on September 7.

180 September 20, 1947, Jerusalem. British raids September 16-19 uncovered several arms caches and terrorist hideouts in the Jerusalem area. The home of David Ben-Gurion, Jewish Agency execu¬tive chairman was robbed of important papers September 18. In Paris, Rabbi Baruch Korff, leader of a Stern gang plot to bomb London, ended a hunger strike in Sante prison on September 15.

181 October 13, 1947. Jerusalem. A terrorist bomb damaged the US. consulate general in Jerusalem, injuring two employees slightly. Similar bombings occurred at the Polish consulate general last night and at the Swedish con¬sulate on September 27.In Baghdad, the Iraq foreign office advised an American House Foreign Affairs Committee group not to make a projected visit there because of “high feeling” over US. endorsement of partitioning of Palestine. The State Department in Washington announced it will issue no passports to American citizens who want to take part in terrorism in Palestine; Americans so involved will forfeit protection normally due US. citizens abroad.

182 October 18, 1947, Palestine. The Palestine Government states that Palestine Arab forces have been sent from the Trans-Jordan frontier to the Syrian and Lebanon borders to replace a British brigade which recently left Palestine. Zionists protested having Arab troops on the border of northern Palestine.

183 November 14, 1947, Palestine. Jewish terrorists killed two British policemen in Jerusalem and two soldiers in Tel Aviv to raise the total casualties in three days of violence to 10 Britons and five Jews killed and 33 Britons and five Jews wounded. The outbreaks began after British troops killed three girls and two boys in a raid on a farmhouse arsenal near Raanana on November 12. The terrorists retaliated yesterday by throwing hand grenades and firing a machine gun into the Ritz Cafe in Jerusalem.

184 November 15, 1947, London. The British Foreign Office denied Jerusalem press reports that Britain planned to take over any financial surplus left in Palestine’s treasury to pay for the costs of evacuation and combating unauthorized Jewish immigration.

185 November 16, 1947, Palestine. About 185 European Jews landed near Nahariya from a small schooner and escaped before the British could intercept them. A larger vessel, the “Kadimah,” was seized and brought to Haifa where 794 Jews were transshipped to a British transport for Cyprus.

186 November 17, 1947, Jerusalem. The British administra¬tion disclosed that it will sell state-owned real estate along the Haifa waterfront, from which it expects to make $8 mil¬lion. It will also invest in England about $16 million from bonds that had been sold to Palestinians. Zionists strongly protested this as they said it would denude Palestine of its assets. There was no comment from the administration to these charges.

187 November 22, 1947, Haifa. Another Arab was murdered in Haifa by the Stern gang following their execution of four Arabs near Raanana November 20 in retaliation for the British shooting of five Stern gang members on November12. Arabs retaliated against this killing at Raanana by wounding five Jews on a bus near Tel Aviv on November 20.

188 November 30- December 6, 1947, Palestine. A week of disorders brought on by Arab wrath over the UN’s deci¬sion to partition the Holy Land ended with at least 159 killed in the Middle East, 66 in Palestine. While Jews in Palestine, Europe and the US. celebrated and began planning their new state and the UN moved to implement its plan, war talk was rife throughout the Arab world. The Arab League announced on December 1 that pre¬miers and foreign ministers of seven Arab states would meet in Cairo next week to plan strategy against partition. In Palestine: Jerusalem and the Jaffa Tel Aviv boundary zone were centers of week-long strife which began when seven Jews were killed throughout Palestine on November 30 and the mayor of Nablus, Arab nationalist center, proclaimed jihad or a holy war. British High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham warned the Arab Higher Command on December 1 that Britain was determined to keep order so long as it held its mandate, and police stopped Arab agita¬tors from raising crowds in Jerusalem. But Jewish celebrations there were stoned. Arabs looted and burned a three-block Jewish business district in Jerusalem on December 2, the first day of a three-day Arab general strike during which 20 Jews and l5 Arabs were killed. When British troops failed to intervene, Haganah (unofficial Zionist militia) came into the open for the first time in eight years to restrain large-scale Jewish retaliation and also guard Jewish districts. Some Haganah men were arrested for possessing weapons. The day’s strife caused $1 million worth of damage and resulted in a 24-hour curfew being applied to Arab Jerusalem for the rest of the week. The curfew was extended to outlying roads on December 3 to stop stonings of Jewish traffic and keep rural Arabs out of the capital. Max Pinn, head of the Jewish Agency’s Trade and Transfer Department was killed on December 2 when Arabs stoned his auto near Ramleh. On this day Jews stoned Arab buses in Jerusalem. On the Jaffa-Tel Aviv boundary, which also is under around-the-clock curfew, the week’s heaviest battle was a six-hour clash between Hagariah and Arabs on December 3 in which seven Jews and five Arabs were killed and 75 persons injured. On December 2, Haganah claimed to have mobilized 10,000 men in the intercity trouble zone, and the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan reported on this date that it had reinforced Jaffa. Seven Jews were killed in Jaffa-Tel Aviv on this date. There were lesser attacks in Haifa this week. It becomes clearly evident that the partition is not going as planned and that although the Jews are pleased, the Arabs are not. There appears to be no way to control the Jews or their determination to drive all of the Arabs out of Jerusalem by force if necessary. The Arabs, initially living in peace with the Jewish minority, have been increasingly vic¬timized by the Jews who, now that the British are leaving, are turning their savage behavior against them. The Jews have redoubled their efforts to build a military force and arm them. They claim that this force is to protect the Jewish population against attacks from the Arab coun¬tries as well as the Arab population of Jerusalem but an even stronger argument can be made that the Zionists are determined to drive out the Arab population by armed force. The initial Arab response to Jewish harassment over the past year has been very slow in coming but it seems to be quite inevitable and a terrible civil war is foreseen. The United States Department of State announced on December 5, 1947 that they were placing an embargo on all American arms shipments to the Middle East It appears that the Soviets have been sending weapons- mostly captured German pieces, to assist the Zionists and accompanying these clandestine arms shipments the Soviets have also sent a very sizable contingent of instructors and advi¬sors to Palestine in months past As many of the Zionists are Russian or Polish in origin, these Communist Russians have been received gladly by the Jewish extremists and quickly blend in with the local populations. Soviet interest in Middle East oil and an overriding interest in obtaining warm-water ports are a prime factor in their interest in a Jewish state in Palestine. The most violent reactions in the Arab world to the UN partition idea are Syrian and Egyptian. However, it is noted that the worst outbreak of anti-partition violence outside Palestine occurred in Aden, a British colony at the entrance to the Red Sea. On December 5, British military reinforcements were sent to Aden after four days of Arab-Jewish fighting in which 5O Jews and 25 Arabs were killed. In Syria, public demonstrations by the Arab population paralyzed business in Damascus earlier this week. The Soviet cultural center and Communist headquarters in Damascus were wrecked on November 30 with four persons killed. The Syrian Communist Party was officially dis¬banded by the government and the US. and British Embas¬sy flags were torn down. On December 1, Syria introduced military training into all boys’ schools and on December 2, the Syrian Parliament enacted a draft law and voted $860,000 for the relief of Palestinian Arabs. On the same day Arabs attacked the Jewish part of Aleppo. In Egypt the Chamber of Deputies resolved on December 1 to help keep Palestine a totally Arab state and to support the Arab population of Palestine against attacks by the Jewish minority. There were repeated anti-US. And British demonstration in Egypt’s main cities, and the British Institute in Zagazig was burned on December 2. All public meetings were banned in Cairo after Egyptian police fought with 15,000 people on December 4.In Lebanon, Arab students smashed the windows of the US. Legation in Beirut on December 1 and Lebanese Communists demonstrated against the partition of Palestine and all schools were closed to prevent student disorders. In Iraq, students in Baghdad wrecked the US. Information offices on December 4. In Saudi Arabia, anti-American demonstrations by Arabs in the oil fields were restrained by the government

189 December 13, 1947, Palestine. Jewish terrorists shifted from defense to attack in the second week of conflict with the Arabs since the UN voted for partition of Palestine. The death toll for the past 14 days was at least 220 in Palestine and 336 in the Middle East, including 111 in Aden. Arab retaliatory raids at Jaffa and Tel Aviv had killed 30 Jews and Arabs when local businessmen on both sides arranged for a truce on December 10 to effect an orange harvest On December 11, however, the Arabs renewed their assaults in the Old City of Jerusalem, which was the worst day of the current strife with 41 fatalities throughout Palestine. On December 12, Haganah launched attacks on both the Arabs and British with a death toll of 20 Arabs, five Jews and two British soldiers killed. On December 13, bombings by the Irgun killed at least 16 Arabs and injured 67 more in Jerusalem and Jaffa and burned down a hundred Arab houses in Jaffa. In Syria, an anti-Jewish attack in retaliation for the Irgun actions burned down a 2,750-year old synagogue in Aleppo and destroyed the priceless Ben-Asher Codex, a 10th century Hebrew Bible of original Old Testament manuscripts.

190 December 14, 1947, Lydda. Regular troops of the Arab Legion of the Trans-Jordan Army killed 14 Jews and wounded nine Jews, two British soldiers and one Arab when they attacked a bus convoy approaching their camp near Lydda. The Arabs said the Jews attacked them first

191 December 17, 1947, Cairo. Premiers of the seven Arab League states called on the Arabs to “prepare for the strug¬gle.” They promised to “prosecute the fight until victori¬ous” General Nuri as-Said Pasha, president of the Iraqi Senate, accused the US. of breaking a promise of neutrali¬ty.

192 December 17, 1947, Nevatim. British troops came to the aid of police standing off a raid by 100 Arabs on the Jewish settlement of Nevatim, seven miles west of Beersheba.

193 December 18, 1947, Khisas. Haganah killed 10 Arabs, including five children in a reprisal raid on Khisas in Northern Palestine.

194 December 19, 1947, Damascus. Reliable reports from Damascus state that Arab guerrillas are massing there in preparation to launching an attack into Palestine before the first of the year.

195 December 20, 1947, Palestine. Haganah carried out another raid on Arabs by attacking the village of Qazasa near Rehovoth. One Arab was killed and two were wounded.

196 December 21, 1947, Jerusalem. The Jewish Agency gave official approval for Haganah to make reprisal raids on Arab villages and “exterminate nests of brigands.”

197 December 25, 1941, Haifa. Emir Mohammed Zeinati, an Arab landowner, was killed in Haifa for selling land to the Jews.

199 December 26, 1947, Palestine. Armed Jewish terrorists raided two diamond factories in Nazthaanya and Tel Aviv and escaped with $107,000 in diamonds, cash and bonds.

The Stern gang distributed leaflets reporting that Israel Levin, a member, was murdered in Tel Aviv on December 24 for trying to betray a Stern gang member.

200 December 29, 1947, Palestine. Irgun members kidnapped and flogged a British major and three sergeants in retaliation for the flogging of Benjamin Kimkhim who was also sentenced to 18 years in prison on December 27 for robbing a bank The major, E Brett, was seized in Nathanya and the sergeants in Tel Aviv and Rishon el Siyon. Each got 18 lash-

es, the same number Kimkhim received.

201 December 29, 1947, Jerusalem. An Irgun terrorist bombing at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem killed 11 Arabs and two Britons.

202 December 30, 1947, London. The Dollis Hill Synagogue in London was set on fire and 12 sacred scrolls were destroyed by angry British citizens who scrawled on the burned edifice “You whip—we burn.”

203 December 21-31, 1947, Palestine. Arab- Jewish conflict in the Holy Land increased the death toll to 489 from vio¬lence in Palestine in the 33 days since the UN decided on partition.

1948

204 January 3-10, 1948, Palestine. Extensive Jewish Agency purchases of US. war surplus high explosives with which to fight Arabs were disclosed in the New York City area. While 191 tons of TNT and the more powerful M-3 were seized before shipment, 73 tons cleared New York for Palestine. The TNT shipment was accidentally discovered when longshore men loading the American Export Lines freighter “Executor” in Jersey City on January 3, dropped a box marked “industrial machinery” and while attempting to repair the box, found cans of TNT bearing US. Army markings. The “machinery” proved to be 32 1/2 tons of TNT, which the US. Customs impounded as contraband because of the ban on American arms shipments to the Middle East On January 10, the FBI was attempting to trace the source of the contraband. The Jewish Agency for Palestine acknowledged on January 10 that it had purchased 199 tons of M-3 from the War Assets Administration at the Army’s Seneca Ordnance Depot near Romulous, New York Federal and state agents recovered 126 tons from a farmhouse and trucks near Asbury Park, New Jersey, and Barclay Heights and Saugerties, New York on January 8-9 but 73 tons were believed to be en route to Palestine. The Jewish Agency called its transaction with the WAA legal, admitted having set up “Foundry Associates, Inc.” in New York with a Haganah agent in charge, to buy explo¬sives for their war on the Arabs. The FBI said Leonard Weisman, president of three New York firms (Pratt Steamship Line, Material Redistribution Corporation and Paragon Design and Development Co.) gave the Haganah agent office space but did nothing illegal.WAA stopped all deliveries on unfulfilled orders on January 9 in the New York area. It said Foundry Associates, Inc., had sworn that it was a normal trader in explosives, thereby qualifying to buy the M-3, and that the export question was a US. Department of State matter.

205 January 4, 1948, Jaffa. A series of Jewish terrorist bombings inflicted heavy Arab casualties. 14 were killed and 100 injured when the Stern gang destroyed the Arab National Committee headquarters in Jaffa.

207 January 6, 1948, Jerusalem. The British Government denounced the Semiramis attack as “wholesale murder of innocent people” but the Jewish Agency alleged that “Arab gangs” used the hotel and asked why attacks on Jews had not been equally denounced.

211 January 13, 1948. Washington. The US. War Assets Administration received orders from Army Secretary Kenneth Royal to cancel its sale of 199 tons of M-3 explosive to a purchasing agent of the Jewish Agency, which got 73 tons out of the country before the rest was seized.

212 January 14-15, 1948, New York The FBI arrested six Newark men on charges of trying to ship Haganah 60,000 pounds of TNT, which was seized in Jersey City after having been bought from the Letterkenny Arsenal Ordnance Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

213 January 16-17, 1948, Haifa. Zionists claimed they had murdered 82Arabs, mostly civilians, in a 24 hour period. In retaliation for the massacres, Arabs machine-gunned 35 Haganah men who were en route to attack another Arab farming settlement.

214 January 17, 1948, Jerusalem: The official death toll of Arabs killed by Jewish terrorists since November 29 had risen to 831.

215 January 25, 1948, Jerusalem. Following the deaths of ten Jews and two Arabs killed in a battle outside Jerusalem, British authorities stated that 721 Arabs, 408 Jews, 19 civilians and 12 British policemen (a total of 1,160) had been killed in an eight-week period that 1,171 Arabs, 749 Jews, 13 civilians and 37 British officers had been wounded.

216 January 26, 1948, Palestine. Mrs. Gold Meyerson, Jewish Agency political director in Jerusalem, and Mote Sheraton, chief of all Agency political operations, told the UN Palestine Commission that Jews must arm against pos¬sible Arab threats and Sheraton demanded a UN policy that would compel the US. to lift its embargo on arms destined

for Jewish groups in the Middle East

217 January 28, 1948, Jerusalem. Rabbi Hillel Silver, chief of the Jewish Agency’s American division, cut short a trip to Jerusalem to return to the US. and campaign for American public support of armed Jewish backing for partition and eventual Zionist control of all Palestine. On January 27, his agency called upon 15,000 young men and women to join Haganah by February 15. British intelligence reports indicate that Haganah had grown from 3,500 to 12,000 full-time members since December 1.

218 January 31, 1948, London. British Foreign Office officials revealed that over 1,000 Soviets, all Russian-speaking Communist military technicians, had been intercepted on the immigrant ships “Pan York” and “Pan Crescent”

219 February 1, 1948, Jerusalem. Arab groups took credit for a bombing that destroyed the “Palestine Post” building. The newspaper had an extensive history of inciting the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem to “destroy Arabs and force them out” of Palestine.

220 February 1, 1948, Milwaukee. WI, Moshe Shertok, Jewish Agency political director, stated that statements that Communist agents were among the intercepted “Pan York” and “Pan Crescent” immigrants from Bulgaria were untrue. Shartok cited a statement from Cyprus refugee camp commissioner, Sir Godfrey Collins, confirming his statement Collins subsequently denied making such a statement .Shertok further said that the Jews of Palestine welcomed all Jews into their country and that Jewish Communists were equally welcome. He denied rumors of Soviet clandestine assistance to various Jewish terrorist groups.

221 February 3, 1948, Jerusalem. Stern gang terrorists killed two British policemen because the bombers of the “Post” had allegedly worn police uniforms. Arabs attacked the Jerusalem Central Prison but were driven off by the guards.

222 The British Foreign Office sent Bulgaria a note of rebuke for “deliberately conniving” in the transshipment of illegal Soviet immigrants to Palestine.

223 February 10, 1948, Jerusalem. British military units pre¬vented Arabs from bringing dynamite and firebombs into Jerusalem’s Old City in an attempt to blow up its Jewish Quarter.

224 February 10, 1948, Palestine. Jewish terrorist groups murdered ten Arabs near an RAF camp in central Palestine A further 23 Arabs were murdered by Jewish groups throughout Palestine.

225 February 11, 1948, Palestine. The British Royal Navy intercepted the ship “Beleaguered Jerusalem” off Nahariya and its 679 Jewish illegal immigrants were transshipped to Cyprus.

226 February 13, 1948, Palestine. A British Army sergeant was arrested in a probe of the death of four Jewish terrorists who were arrested at their sniper post and then released in an Arab neighborhood. The Jews were immedi¬ately stoned to death by the Arabs.227 February 15, 1948, Galilee. Jewish terrorists raided an Arab settlement in upper Galilee, killing 30 Arabs, including 10 children, and blew up bridges.

228 February 16, 1948, New York The UN Palestine Commission reported to the Security Council that it would take a UN military force to save the Palestine partition from “cata¬strophic” failure. The report criticized “(c)ertain elements of the Jewish community,” for “irresponsible ads of violence which worsen the security situation.” The Commission quoted official British figures on Palestine casualties during November 30-February 1:869 killed, including 427 Arabs, 381 Jews, 46 British and 15 of other nationalities; 1,909 wounded, including 1,035 Arabs, 725 Jews, 135 British and 14 others.

229 February 20, 1948, Jerusalem. Twelve Jewish terrorists, including Moshe Svorai, second in command of the Stern gang, escaped from the Central Prison in Jerusalem.

230 February 22, 1948, Jerusalem. Two truckloads of high explosives were detonated in Ben Yehuda Street in the Jewish section of Jerusalem. The blast leveled a three block Jewish business center, killing at least 60 with 20 missing and 200 injured. Jews blamed the British because armored trucks with police insignia had escorted the truck bombs into the area.

231 February 23, 1948, Palestine. Northern Palestine Arabs took credit for the BenYehuda bombing and said they had carried out the attack as retaliation for a Jewish bombing that had killed seven Arabs in Ramleh.

232 February 27, 1948, Jerusalem. Two anti-Communist Polish residents of Jerusalem were murdered by Stem gang terrorists who claimed the Poles were “pro-Arab.”

233 February 29, 1948, Rehoveth. The British Mandate Government denounced the Jewish Agency after 28 British soldiers were killed and 35 seriously injured when a Haifa-bound train from Cairo was blown up. Stern gang terrorists took credit for the bombing of the British train as revenge for the Ben Yehuda Street bombing in Jerusalem.

234 March 1, 1948, Jerusalem. The British Mandate government accused the Jewish Agency of circulating false charges that Britons had committed the BenYehuda bombing and of tolerating Jewish terrorists “for political rea¬sons.” It warned that “continuance of indiscriminate mur¬der” would mean “forfeiture by the Jewish community of all right . . . to be numbered among civilized peoples. ”Immediately after issuance of this statement, the car of British Commander Lt Gen. McMillan was bombed near Jerusalem but the general was not in the car at the time.

235 March 2, 1948, Haifa. Stern gang terrorists detonated a truckful of explosives at an Arab office building in Haifa, killing at least 14 Arabs.

236 March 4, 1948, Ramallah. In retaliation for the Haifa bombing of March 2, Arabs ambushed and killed 17 Haganah youths near RamaIlah

237 March 5, 1948, Tel Aviv. Haganah killed 15 Arabs near Tel Aviv in revenge for the March 4 ambush of their members

238 March 5, 1948, Jerusalem. The Jewish Agency stated that large-scale Jewish arms shipments were ready in various Mediterranean ports destined for the arming of Jewish partisans in Palestine to “fight and drive out” the Arab popu¬lation of what the Agency stated “was eternal Jewish land” that could not be occupied by either the British or the Arabs.

239 March 11, 1948, Jerusalem. The Jewish Agency’s building in Jerusalem was bombed with 13 persons killed and 84 injured. An American car, believed to have been stolen from the US. consulate by an Arab chauffeur, was driven through the agency’s elaborate barricades with a load of explosives. The driver escaped.

240 March 11, 1948, New York. Communist and their left wing labor unions turned out over 10,000 persons in a protest rally against US. “betrayal” of partition.

241 March 12, 1948, New York Columnist Drew Pearson said in his “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column that President Harry Truman had given Democratic party leaders the following reason for holding back on enforcement of Palestine partition after having championed this in the UN last year: Russia was after a US. Army-built railroad north from the Persian Gulf, plus all Arab oil regions and the Eastern Mediterranean. On March, Pearson had stated in the same forum that President Truman had told a New York publisher that New York Jews were “disloyal” to the United States.

242 March 12, 1948~ New York An Arab Higher Command paper was issued that charged the Jewish Agency with massing Soviet trained and equipped illegal immigrants in Eastern Europe for war service in Palestine and had “set up laboratories for bacteriological warfare.”

243 March 30, 1948, Palestine. British authorities released the latest casualty figures: In March, 566 persons, including 271 Jews 256Arabs, 39 British and others were killed.

244 March 30, 1948, New York Soviet and Jewish groups informed the UN Security Council that they defended the UN’s previous decision for a separate Jewish state. Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, told the Security Council that partition was “a just solution,” that he was not convinced that it could not be carried out peacefully and that by “wrecking” it the US. would have to take the full blame for “a serious blow upon the UN organization”

245 April 1, 1948, New York The UN found that it had transversed a circle—from one special General Assembly session to another—in its year-long effort to solve the Palestine problem. Britain referred the Holy Land dispute to the UN April 2, 1947, and asked for a special Assembly session, Events since then:

250 April 25, 1948, Jaffa. The Irgun launched an attack on Arab Jaffa claiming that it was a stronghold for Arabs. They also attacked Tel Aviv with 2,000 men, armored cars and mortars and captured the Arab district of Mansielt. Their advance was halted when British fighter planes and light artillery were used against the Irgun.

251 April 27, 1948, Palestine. Initially condemning the Irgun for its attack on Jaffa, the Haganah reached an agreement with Irgun and the latter agreed to operate under Haganah control. Both groups then attacked, Haganah seizing Jaffa’s eastern and southern suburbs. The Arab city was encircled by April 29, and all but 15,000 of Jaffa’s Arab inhabitants had been driven from the city, although the town was officially termed an Arab area. In Tel Aviv, the Stern gang robbed Barclays Bank of $1 million.

252 April 30, 1948, Jerusalem. Haganah scored victories against the Arab residents after fruitless UN efforts to arrange a truce that would protect historical shrines in the ancient Walled City. Jewish extremists threatened to dyna¬mite the Arab Dome of the Rock Mosque unless all Arabs immediately evacuated Jerusalem. The British response was that if this happened, they would blow up the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of the destroyed temple. The Haganah agreed to respect both Arab and Christian monu-ments but insisted all Arabs and Christians must leave Jerusalem. In a move they described as “defensive,” the Haganah overran the Christian Arab Katamon quarter in southwestern modern Jerusalem and captured most of the Moslem Mamilla cemetery. Jewish workers seized the gen¬eral post office in Jerusalem. In Katamon, Haganah captured St Simon’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, drove out the monks and vandalized the building. British troops stepped in to prevent further massacre of the Arabs.

253 May 2, 1948, Jerusalem. The British finally halted wide-spread strife in Jerusalem by rushing several thousand mechanized army units and Royal Marine commandos back to Palestine. Their primary purpose was to protect Arab civilians who were being slaughtered by rampaging Zionists.

254 May 5-8, 1948, Palestine. The Haganah, now styling itself a “Jewish Army,” struck Upper Galilee in northeastern Palestine and claimed to have crushed any Arab resis¬tance by the end of the week. Safad, capital of Upper Galilee and normally a city of 15,000 Arabs, was reported by the Jewish Agency as having been “cleansed” of Arabs by May 6. The only remaining occupants of the town were 2,000 Jews. Haganah announced that all Arab property had been confiscated from the owners and would be given to Jewish settlers.

255 May 4, 1948, Tel Aviv. The 37-man Jewish Legislative Council met in Tel Aviv and heard Premier-designate David Ben-Gurion declare that 150,000 Arabs had been dri¬ven from their homes in the past five months but that the Jews “haven’t lost a single settlement” The Stern gang resumed “direct war” against the British for protecting the Arab population of Jerusalem. Seven British soldiers were killed near Nethanya. At the same time, the Stern gang took credit for a letter bomb which killed the young brother of a British army officer in England.

256 May 6, 1948, Jerusalem. Haganah was redesignated as the Jewish State Army and reported that 200 aircraft, later revealed by British authorities as having come from Czechoslovakia, whose new communist government is almost entirely composed of Zionists and who have been pouring weapons into Palestine, are slated to reinforce the new army. The army will be increased to 85,000 immedi¬ately.

257 May 16, 1948, New York The number of states recog¬nizing Israel increased to eight this week, and the new country applied for admission to the UN. Russia immedi¬ately granted recognition on May 17, implying that it rec¬ognized Israel’s government as the de jure (legal) government while the United States recognized Israel only as the de facto (in fact) government

258 May 22, 1948, Jerusalem. Thomas Wasson, US. Consul General in Jerusalem and a member of the Council’s Truce Commission, was fatally wounded by a Stern gang sniper near the US. Consulate. Two other Consulate members were also assaulted, one dying the next day.

259 September 17, 1948, Jerusalem. Angered by his order to readmit 8,000 Arab refugees driven from three villages near Haifa by attacks of Jewish terrorists, the Stern gang assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, UN mediator for Palestine. Also killed in the attack was French Col. Andre Serot, chief of France’s 100-man contingent in the unarmed UN truce-observer team.